Wasatch Taylormade Builders streamlines operations and saves $50,000 per year with CMiC construction platform
The Challenge
Wasatch Taylormade Builders, LLC is a fully integrated real estate development, construction, property management and guaranty capital company based in Logan, Utah. Unlike contractors that are not vertically integrated, Wasatch doesn’t ‘build for a fee’ because they are their own customer. As a subsidiary of Wasatch Group, Wasatch Taylormade is the parent company’s third and most recent contracting spin-off. The original operating company had annual revenue between $100-200 million while the new group has achieved between $50-100 million as a startup. With Wasatch Group’s years of experience in development and new construction, Wasatch Taylormade Builders established their operations from scratch. Like many general contracting startups, they adopted the same basic tool the industry has been using for decades—spreadsheets.
Using a combination of Microsoft Office programs and experimenting with several different field solutions, the Wasatch team was looking to replace their “archaic” processes with a solution that would enhance productivity and scale with their growing business. They tested Buildertrend, a project management software package for residential home builders, but found it did not suit their needs as a full-service general contractor. To manage project documents, Wasatch used PlanGrid, but they needed a solution that could manage more than building plans and ASIs.
Ultimately, what the Wasatch team lacked was an intelligent, fully integrated platform – purpose-built for construction – to run their entire business, from the back office to the field.
The Solution
“With CMiC, our field team enters the RFI and sends it directly to whomever needs to answer it. In the past, the information would be loaded onto a network drive, which would require returning to a computer in the office at a later time to download and view the files. I suspect that we are saving $45,000 to $50,000 per year as well as having a field engineer in the office. CMiC did more than shape our processes—it shaped our operations overall.” —Jake Anderson, vice president of Wasatch Taylormade Builders
Their priorities included finding a solution to automate their most time-consuming tasks, including generating contracts, RFIs and submittals.
Initially, Wasatch only evaluated vendors that offered collaboration tools for their field teams. “We went through a few demos with Procore, but their pricing model did not work for our organization,” says Jake Anderson, vice president of Wasatch Taylormade. “Originally, we had no intention of bringing in our financials but reconsidered once we were introduced to the capabilities of CMiC.”
Unlike the other vendors Wasatch evaluated, CMiC was the complete package, offering a full set of unified capabilities to manage all aspects of a construction firm’s project delivery and accounting operations, all on a single database platform.
The Result
By housing all critical business functions in a single database platform, Wasatch eliminated siloes and improved the exchange of communications within their firm. They saw immediate improvements in how they handled RFIs, submittals and subcontracts.
Before CMiC, RFIs were manually entered into a spreadsheet and converted into a PDF to either be printed or emailed. From there, the document would either sit on a superintendent’s desk or in an email inbox until updated information was rekeyed back into the spreadsheet. “With CMiC, our field team enters the RFI and sends it directly to whomever needs to answer it,” says Anderson. “When they reply to it, the answer is already in CMiC – eliminating the delay that comes with waiting until the crew returns to the office.” By getting the information to their architects faster, the Wasatch team reduced the time spent handling RFIs by 50%.
Similarly, their subcontract and submittals processes have benefitted from the digitization of the jobsite. “Having the submittals available on our tablets in the field is a great advantage,” says Anderson. “In the past, the information would be loaded onto a network drive, which would require returning to a computer in the office at a later time to download and view the files.” Today, this ability to input data from the jobsite saves Wasatch an hour per subcontract. “I suspect that we are saving $45,000 to $50,000 per year as well as having a project engineer in the office,” says Anderson. “Our employees in the field bypass the project engineer because they can enter that RFI or submittal directly onsite.”
With CMiC, the Wasatch team successfully found the robust solution they needed to establish their business. “We did not have a system in place before deploying CMiC,” reflects Anderson. “CMiC did more than shape our processes—it shaped our operations overall.”
Other Results Wasatch Taylormade Builders has Achieved with CMiC:
Bids are placed 20-30% faster
The new subcontract & submittals processes save $45,000-$50,000 per year
RFIs are processed in half the time
A project engineer FTE is no longer needed in the office and has been redeployed to the field
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